Every year in the U.S., more than 30,000 people die from things related to guns.

That puts guns ahead of HIV, Parkinson's disease, malnutrition, hypertension, intestinal infection, peptic ulcer, anemia, viral hepatitis, biliary tract disease, atherosclerosis and fires. Yet, the funding for research on gun violence lags far behind other leading causes of death, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the#NPRreadshashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories.

Eight-year-old Mari Copeny from Flint, Mich., sent President Obama a message last month. She told him about her activism on behalf of those affected by Flint's contaminated water and asked if he would meet with her and others from Flint when they came to Washington, D.C., for testimony by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder at a congressional hearing.

"My mom said chances are you will be too busy with more important things, but there is a lot of people coming on these buses and even just a meeting from you or your wife would really lift people's spirits," she wrote.

The California Senate voted Thursday to raise the legal age to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21. The measure is part of a larger package of legislation aimed at cracking down on tobacco.

If Gov. Jerry Brown signs the bill, California will become the second state, after Hawaii, to raise the age limit for buying cigarettes and other tobacco products. More than 100 cities around the country, including New York and Boston, have already raised the age limit.

Health officials have confirmed that someone in Dallas County, Texas, contracted the Zika virus through sexual contact.

It's the first U.S. case related to the recent Western Hemisphere outbreak to be acquired through sex. Until now, experts have focused on transmission of the virus through mosquito bites.

Dallas County Health and Human Services says the patient, who remains anonymous, became infected after having sexual contact with someone who was ill and had returned from a country where the Zika virus is present.

President Obama plans to ask Congress for $755 million in cancer-research funding as part of his 2017 budget, according to the White House.

That would bring the funding total to nearly $1 billion over the next two years to accelerate what the president called a "moonshot" to try to eliminate cancer. Congress has already approved $195 million in research funding in 2016.

Florida's Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys was a horror tale come to life.

"There's just too many stories," Roger Kiser, who was at the school in the 1950s, told NPR in 2012. "I know of one [boy] that I personally saw die in the bathtub that had been beaten half to death. I thought he'd been mauled by the dogs because I thought he had ran. I never did find out the true story on that. There was the boy I saw who was dead who came out of the dryer. They put him in one of those large dryers."

Following the rapid outbreak of a malarial virus called Zika in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned pregnant women against traveling to those regions. The tropical illness has been linked to birth defects.

"Out of an abundance of caution, pregnant women advised to consider postponing travel to areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing," the CDC said Friday.

#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreadshashtag. On Fridays, we highlight some of the best stories.

The Department of Justice announced it is bringing civil and criminal charges against some makers and marketers of dietary supplements. According to a statement, the DOJ alleges that the companies sold supplements that either contained unlisted ingredients or make health claims that are inadequately supported by scientific evidence.

The U.S. Supreme Court justices said Friday they would hear a group of cases brought by religious hospitals, schools, and charities that object to the system devised under Obamacare to spare them from paying for birth control coverage for their employees and students.

Nearly one year after Kaci Hickox was quarantined in New Jersey upon her return from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, she is suing Gov. Chris Christie and state health department officials. She says they unlawfully detained her.

Represented by the ACLU of New Jersey and two New York law firms, Hickox claims that she was held against her will for three days, even after she tested negative for Ebola.

Hands the size of quarters and weighing only 1 pound, a baby born about three months early aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean is expected to live.

A Utah couple, Chase and Emily Morgan, were on a seven-day Royal Caribbean cruise with their 3-year-old daughter earlier this month. What was supposed to be a relaxing vacation to celebrate their daughter's birthday quickly turned into a nightmare when Morgan went into early labor on the family's second night aboard.

Morgan's due date wasn't until Dec. 19, but her son Haiden had other plans.

A tall rectangular building juts out of a mountainside on a Norwegian island just 800 miles from the North Pole. Narrow and sharply edged, the facility cuts an intimidating figure against the barren Arctic background. But the gray building holds the key to the earth's biodiversity.